[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 135 (Friday, September 18, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H6170-H6174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONSTITUTION DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poliquin). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we have talked about a lot this week. There
has been a lot going on in Congress. We haven't gotten to spend much
time recognizing that yesterday was Constitution Day, September 17,
celebrating that summer in 1787 where they worked all summer long and
all the way up until September 17 to craft this document that I would
argue has preserved our freedoms for over 200 years. I want to talk
about what I would argue is a national threat, a bipartisan threat to
those principles embodied in that Constitution.
By way of background, Mr. Speaker, I want to put up a quote from
James Madison. You can't see it from where you are, but James Madison
says this:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many,
and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
Mr. Speaker, we talk a lot about tyranny in different governments
around the globe. What James Madison says is we are not talking about
one evil dictator.
Mr. Kinzinger was down here just a moment ago talking about how one
evil dictator can change the entire makeup of regional peace and
stability. James Madison portrays it even larger. He says it does not
matter whether it is one person or a few people or even many people. It
does not matter whether it is hereditary or self-appointed or elective.
When you have all of the power located in any one place, tyranny is the
result.
We learn at an early age in our schools, Mr. Speaker, about
separation of powers. We learn about checks and balances. We learn
about the legislative branch on Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court right
behind us, the executive branch headquartered at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, and the natural tension that is created within those branches.
John Adams said, Mr. Speaker:
A question arises whether all the powers of government,
legislative, executive, and judicial, shall be left in this
body.
They were struggling at that time trying to create our form of
government. He says:
I think a people cannot long be free, nor ever happy, whose
government is in one Assembly.
Constitution Day yesterday, Mr. Speaker, represents the culmination
of all of the challenges, all of the thoughts, all of the prayers to
spawn a new nation. But what they grappled with for the entirety of
that summer was how to create a system that would prevent a return to
tyranny.
The accumulation of all powers in the same hands, whether
one, few, or many, whether hereditary, whether self-
appointed, whether elective, may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny.
James Madison.
I talk about that, Mr. Speaker, here, the day after Constitution Day,
because this is something that I have seen come up over and over again
in my lifetime in a bipartisan and a bicameral way.
So often we find ourselves talking about President Obama, Mr.
Speaker, and I will certainly do that later on in this hour, but I want
to begin by talking about President Bush. The headline I have here
coming from The Washington Post, Mr. Speaker, says: ``Bush's Tactic of
Refusing Laws is Probed.'' The Washington Post says this:
The President is indicating that he will not either enforce
part or the entirety of congressional bills, according to the
ABA president, a Massachusetts attorney. ``We will be close
to a constitutional crisis,'' the ABA president says, ``when
the President of the United States' use of signing statements
is left unchecked.''
This is where you are signing a bill into law. We have all seen the
``I am just a bill sitting here on Capitol Hill.'' We all know how laws
are made. Congress deliberates, crafts, passes, sends to the President
for his signature. Well, a signing statement is when you sign a bill
into law and say: Oh, but by the way, this particular part of the law I
don't recognize as being valid. Well, the veto pen gives you an
opportunity to reject a law if you don't like it. A signing statement
says: I like this part, and I am going to enforce it, but I don't like
this part, and I am not.
Another headline, ``Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws'':
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey
more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting
that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by
Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the
Constitution.
Now, Mr. Speaker, you and I were not in Congress during the Bush
administration. You and I did not have an oversight role of the Bush
administration, but I would tell you that Republicans and Democrats are
each complicit in their own way in allowing the people's power, not the
House's power, but the people's power to slowly drift down Pennsylvania
Avenue, away from the people's representatives on Capitol Hill and into
the hands of a Chief Executive.
This was going on during the Bush administration. This was a part of
the national conversation during the Bush administration, but most
Republicans remained silent. This is not a Republican or a Democratic
issue. This is an American issue. This is a constitutional issue. If we
are to prevent tyranny, we have to stand and be counted.
Mr. Speaker, Barack Obama was in Congress during the Bush
administration. While you and I were not, Barack Obama was, and he says
this in March of 2008:
I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest
problems that we are facing right now have to do with the
President--
then President Bush--
trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch
and not go through Congress at all. And that is what I intend
to reverse when I'm President of the United States.
Mr. Speaker, that is almost laughable, as we sit here in September of
2015. The words of then-Senator, now-President Barack Obama:
I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest
problems that we are facing right now have to do with the
President trying to bring more and more power into the
executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and
that's what I intend to reverse when I'm President of the
United States.
May of that same year, Mr. Speaker, then Senator Obama, now President
Obama says this:
We have got a government designed by the Founders so that
there would be checks and balances. You don't want a
President who is too powerful or a Congress who is too
powerful or a court that is too powerful. Everybody's got
their own role. Congress' job is to pass legislation. The
President can veto it or he can sign it. I believe in the
Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United
States. We are not going to use signing statements as a way
of doing an end run around Congress.
When President Obama was Senator Obama, he saw separation of powers
clearly; he saw the checks and balances clearly. On the campaign trail,
while he was seeking to be the next President of the United States, he
recognized the transgressions of the Bush administration, and he said:
Not on my watch, I will not follow in that path.
[[Page H6171]]
That was an election year, 2008. It seems laughable as we sit here in
September of 2015.
Mr. Speaker, I take you to a press conference by President Obama in
August of 2013. The Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, was in all the
headlines. The President says this:
In a normal political environment, it would have been
easier for me to simply call up the Speaker, then Speaker
Boehner, and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn't
go to the essence of the law--it has to do with, for example,
are we able to simplify the attestation of employers to
whether they're already providing health insurance or not.
Mr. Speaker, if you don't recall this press conference, the
President, having just begun to implement the Affordable Care Act--
remember, it was jammed through Congress, completely partisan vote,
wasn't quite ready for prime time, but they lost the Senate election;
they had to move through the unfinished product. As that bill is being
implemented, obviously there are problems because it was not a
conference bill. It was not a bill that had worked its way through the
committee process. The President says: Well, ordinarily, when you are
trying to fix these kind of problems, I would have just called up the
Speaker. I would have said, Mr. Speaker, the law didn't work out quite
the way we wanted it to. We need a few tweaks to make the law work.
The President continues. He says: It looks like there may be some
better ways to do this, better ways than the way the law was drafted.
Let's make a technical change to the law, the President says, what he
would have asked for, had he called Speaker Boehner. The President
says: That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we
are not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to ObamaCare.
We did have the executive authority to do so--by doing so, he means
waiving parts of the Affordable Care Act--and we did so.
As candidate Obama, he saw clearly that the Bush administration was
overstepping its bounds as the executive, failing to either veto a law
or pass a law, failing to recognize the separation of powers, Mr.
Speaker. The President recognized that when he was a United States
Senator. He recognized that while he was on the campaign trail, but
when he was sworn into the office of President of the United States of
America, upholder and defender of the United States Constitution, he
says:
What I would have liked to have done was follow the law.
What I would have liked to have done was to contact the
Speaker and try to change the law, but we are not in normal
circumstances around here. So I just did it myself. I had the
authority, and I did it myself.
Mr. Speaker, that was one press conference in August of 2013, but the
list goes on. I am not having this conversation today to pick on the
President of the United States, not this President of the United States
in particular, but something happens when you have all of the power and
the responsibility that is vested in the White House--it happened to
President Bush; it has happened to President Obama--where you say: I
have all of this responsibility, and I am just going to do it. As long
as the ends are correct, the means don't matter.
{time} 1330
That is not okay. It is not okay for any of us, Republican or
Democrat. You may like the way that goes today. As a Republican, we may
have liked it when President Bush was doing it. As a Democrat, you
might like it when President Obama is doing it.
But it is not the right way to run this country, and it is
dangerous--dangerous--to the folks who actually hold the power, and
that is each individual citizen of the United States.
I will use the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Speaker, as one minor
example. The individual mandate delay said every American must go out
and buy health insurance. Well, the plans weren't available.
Again, the law wasn't ready for prime time. We all knew it wasn't
going to work. The President knew it wasn't going to work.
Congress introduced not one bill, not two bills, not three bills, but
four different bills to fix the individual mandate. These were not
Republican bills. These were bipartisan bills.
But the President, in the press conference that we talked about from
August 2013, decided by himself to act unilaterally to change the law.
It wasn't that Congress wouldn't do it. Congress wanted to do it.
The President said:
No. I don't want to work with Congress to do it. I am going
to do it on my own.
He didn't just do it in October of 2013. He waived it again in March
2014 and again in February 2015, all on the one very specific section
of the individual mandate.
We could have worked together. The Constitution requires that we work
together. The Constitution requires that the law either be followed or
be changed.
Changes of the law have to come through Congress, have to be signed
by the President. In the case of Barack Obama, neither happened.
The employer mandate delay, Mr. Speaker, again, it is not that the
House didn't want to deal with this issue. As you recall, the employers
were not ready for this.
Again, this was not a fully baked idea. The White House knew this
wasn't going to work. The Congress knew this wasn't going to work.
And so the House, of which I was a Member at that time, didn't just
come up with a bill. We passed a bill. There wasn't just one bill.
There were three bills--House bills and Senate bills--to solve this
problem that the White House knew existed, that Congress knew existed,
and that the American people knew existed.
But the President didn't work with Congress. He went off and acted
alone in July of 2013, waiving it once, and in February of 2014,
waiving it again. Where is the outcry? Not the outcry over the policy,
but the outcry over the process.
There are things that happen in this country, Mr. Speaker, that you
and I may agree with the ends. But if the means are not the correct
means, we have to stand up and say no.
Any American who works in manufacturing knows that, if you have a
flawed process, you are going to produce a flawed product.
Process matters. It matters most when we are talking about protecting
individual liberty. But Americans have become so frustrated, Mr.
Speaker.
Americans have put that label on Washington, D.C., as either being
inept or ineffective, intransigent, not able to work together, not able
to move things forward. They have come to a place where they say the
ends justify the means. It is a dangerous place to be.
Mr. Speaker, going back to the Affordable Care Act, ``The renewal of
noncompliant plans'' is the headline I have here. I am sure you
remember that from May, Mr. Speaker.
These were the plans that the President said are so bad, they are so
damaging to American families, we have got to outlaw them. If you have
one of these plans, we are going to outlaw these plans, because they
are unworthy of Americans.
Well, when it actually came time for that part of the law to go into
effect, it turns out there was a reason these plans existed: because
folks couldn't afford more of an insurance policy than that. They
needed these plans.
So what the President did is he said:
We know this isn't going to work. We know this part of the
law is flawed. We have to fix it.
Congress said:
You are absolutely right.
House bill, Senate bill, bipartisan bills to solve the problem. The
President acted alone, first in November of 2013, then in March of
2014, waiving the law, saying:
I advocated for this law. I signed this law. I made this
language the law of the land. But now I don't like it. Rather
than seeking a solution from Congress--which Congress had--I
am going to act alone.
And, finally, on the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Speaker, the penalty
waivers where you were going to be fined. If you didn't do what the law
said you were supposed to do, you were going to be fined by the law.
That wasn't going to work.
The system was not in place for Americans to follow the law. The
paperwork trail, as you know, is amazingly burdensome. Folks could not
comply with the law.
The White House knew it. The Congress knew it. The American people
know it. That is why we had not one bill, not two bills, not three
bills, but four bills, not just in the House, but in
[[Page H6172]]
the House and Senate, not just Republicans, but bipartisan bills to
solve that problem.
But the President didn't work with the Congress. The President didn't
call the Speaker. The President went and acted alone, first in January
2015, again in February 2015.
Mr. Speaker, I am not down here to argue about the results of what
the President did. I supported this legislation to achieve all of the
goals that the President achieved by acting alone. But the President
cannot write the law. The Congress must write the law.
We, as the American people--not we, as the House of Representatives--
we, as the American people, cannot support a President amassing all of
that authority to do whatever that President likes alone.
Our Framers knew it. John Adams knew it. James Madison knew it. They
worked throughout the summer of 1787 to prevent it from ever taking
root here in America. If we fail to keep watch, it is going to be on
our watch that those liberties slip away.
I will go back to President George Bush. Because it makes me sad, Mr.
Speaker, that when we try to have a conversation where we are critical
of the White House, it sounds like we are just picking on a President
that is not of our party. Nonsense.
I am not saying that doesn't go on. Of course that goes on. I am just
saying that is not where we are today. So I want to take it back to
President Bush one more time.
President Bush worked on immigration reform. Goodness knows we need
immigration reform. I support immigration reform. We have a system that
is broken.
Folks who need to get here can't get here. Folks who shouldn't be
here are able to get here. Anyway, it is a problem and challenge that
America has been facing not just this year, not last year, but for
decades.
President Bush said this:
Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the
American people. And Congress' failure to act on it is a
disappointment.
The American people understand the status quo is unacceptable when it
comes to our immigration laws. A lot of us worked hard to see if we
couldn't find common ground, but it didn't work.
President Bush, wanting to achieve immigration reform, chastised
Congress for not acting on immigration reform, championing the cause,
asking for Congress to do more, but understanding what his limitations
are.
President Obama, March 2011:
With respect to the notion that I can just suspend
deportations through an executive order, that is just not the
case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has.
In March of 2011, when asked about deportations and what is going on
with immigration law and why won't Congress move forward, the President
says:
The notion that I can just suspend deportations just isn't
the case because there are laws that govern deportations.
President Obama, October 2010:
I am President. I am not king. I can't do these things just
by myself. We have a system of government that requires the
Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen.
Mr. Speaker, these are the words of President Obama shortly after he
became President. These are the sentiments of President Obama echoing
the sentiments of then-Senator Obama when he said there is a way that
this government is supposed to run and it takes all three branches to
make it happen. Nobody can do it alone.
President Obama, May 2010:
Comprehensive reform. That is how we are going to solve
this problem. Anybody who tells you it is going to be easy or
that I can just waive a magic wand and make it happen hasn't
been paying attention to how this town works.
He knows that it has to be a collaborative effort in order to change
the law.
July 2010, President Obama:
There are those in the immigrants' rights community who
have argued passionately that we should simply provide those
who are here illegally with legal status or at least ignore
the laws on the books and put an end to deportations until we
have better laws.
That is what folks were asking of President Obama:
Can't you just ignore the laws? If you can't ignore the
laws, won't you just put deportations on hold?
The President responded with this:
I believe that such an indiscriminate approach would be
both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking
about coming here illegally that there will be no
repercussions for such a decision, and this could lead to a
surge in more illegal immigration.
Did you see that was a little different conversation than what the
President was talking about a little earlier?
Statement after statement, speech after speech, conversation after
conversation, the President said:
No, I can't do this because it is against the law. No, I
can't do this because the Constitution doesn't give me these
powers. No, I can't do this because that is not what a
President in the United States of America is allowed to do.
But then the conversation begins to change. What I just read to you,
Mr. Speaker, was a quote about policy:
Well, I just don't think it is a good idea to do it.
It is not it is illegal, not it is unconstitutional to do it.
I just don't think it is a good idea to do it.
Mr. Speaker, fast-forward to November of last year. The President
talked about his unilateral actions to suspend deportations, exactly as
he said years earlier he was not allowed to do under the law.
He says this:
The actions I'm taking are not only lawful, they're the
kinds of actions taken by every single Republican President,
every single Democratic President of the past half-century.
And to those Members of Congress who question my authority
to make our immigration system work better or question the
wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one
answer: Pass a bill.
I want to work with both parties to pass a more permanent
legislative solution. And the day I sign that bill into law,
the actions I take today will no longer be necessary.
That is pretty powerful, Mr. Speaker.
I wanted Congress to do what I wanted Congress to do, but
they didn't. It didn't. So I'm going to do it myself. I have
said that I couldn't. I said it was illegal to do. But I have
rethought it. I now think it is perfectly legal to do, and
I'm going to do it. But goods news, Congress, good news,
American people. As soon as Congress does do what I want
it to do, I'm going to stop doing what I'm not allowed to
do.
Where was the outcry? Not the outcry over the policy, Mr. Speaker.
The outcry over the process. We heard the outcry from Democrats when
President Bush was overreaching. We heard the outcry from Republicans
as President Obama has been overreaching.
But where is the outcry from America that says:
You know what? There might just be some wisdom in what John
Adams and James Madison had to say. You know what? There
might just be some merit to this whole separation of powers,
checks and balances idea. You know what? Perhaps the ends
don't justify the means. Let's stick with constitutional
authority.
Mr. Speaker, this is not just a congressional or an executive branch
issue. I quote Jonathan Turley, law professor, one of the eminent
constitutional scholars of our time.
He says this:
Our government requires consent and compromise to function.
It goes without saying that, when we are politically divided
as a Nation, less tends to get done.
I don't believe that shocks you, Mr. Speaker. It certainly doesn't
shock me.
However, such division is no license to go it alone, as
President Obama has suggested. You have only two choices in
our system when facing political adversaries. You can either
seek to convince them or you can replace them.
That is pretty powerful. As we talked about Constitution Day
yesterday, Mr. Speaker, that is pretty powerful.
When we disagree in this country, we have two options. We can either
change one another's minds or we can replace the people that we put in
authority to make those decisions.
Jonathan Turley continues:
This is obviously frustrating for our Presidents and their
supporters who want to see real change and to transcend
gridlock. However, there is nothing noble in circumventing
the Constitution. The claim of any one person that they can
get the job done unilaterally is the very siren's call that
our Framers warned us to resist.
{time} 1345
The very notion that anyone can get the job done alone, Mr. Speaker,
is the siren's call that our framers warned us to respect. Jonathan
Turley continues:
It is certainly true that the Framers expected much from
us, but no more than they demanded from themselves.
Mr. Speaker, this was November of 2014, when the President did his
last
[[Page H6173]]
round of unilateral immigration changes. Headline of the Washington
Post, ``President Obama's Unilateral Action on Immigration Has No
Precedent.'' February of this year, headline, ``Federal Judge Blocks
Obama's Executive Actions on Immigration.''
These aren't issues for the courts, Mr. Speaker. If Congress passes a
law and the President signs a law and that law is unconstitutional,
that is the issue for the courts. The issue of whether or not we want
Presidents to be able to amass all the power so that they can get the
job done alone is not an issue for the courts. It is an issue for every
single one of us as citizens.
Mr. Speaker, I went through the Affordable Care Act. I went through
immigration. It is not like the list is short.
Climate change, do you remember the climate change bill when
Democrats had complete control of the U.S. House and the United States
Senate and the White House the first 2 years of President Obama's first
term? They worked and worked and worked and worked and worked to pass a
climate change bill. They couldn't do it. It was rejected in a
bipartisan way on Capitol Hill.
Headline from the Washington Post, last month, August, 2015, ``What
You Need to Know About Obama's Biggest Global Warming Move Yet, His
Clean Power Plan.'' This is an editorial from Laurence Tribe, another
constitutional law professor recognized by absolutely everyone on both
sides of the aisle for his knowledge. I would tell you he is not a
particularly conservative law professor. I would tell you that he
stands with my liberal friends more often than he stands with my
conservative friends.
But he is not talking about liberalism. He is not talking about
conservatism. He is not talking about public policy. He is talking
about constitutional law, and he says this:
As a law professor, I taught the Nation's first
environmental law class 45 years ago; and as a lawyer, I have
supported countless environmental causes. And as a father and
grandfather, I want to leave the Earth in better shape than
when I arrived.
All of his policy goals support the environment, support those
causes--want to leave the Earth in better shape than I found it. He
says:
Nonetheless, I recently filed comments with the
Environmental Protection Agency urging the Agency to withdraw
its Clean Power Plan, a regulatory proposal to reduce carbon
emissions from the Nation's electric power plants. In my
view, coping with climate change is a vital end.
Hear that. In his view, solving the problem that the President aims
to solve is a vital end.
Laurence Tribe continues:
But it does not justify using unconstitutional means.
Mr. Speaker, I don't admire the men and women in this Chamber who
rise to their feet to cheer the causes that they support. I admire the
men and women in this Chamber who do the right thing, even when it is
hard to do so.
I admire the men and women who stand up to their party leadership
when it is hard to do so. I admire the men and women who put their
obligation to their constituents above their obligation to party, who
put their obligation to the Constitution above their passions for the
direction of public policy.
Taught the first environmental law class 45 years ago. Coping with
climate change is a vital end, but it does not justify using
unconstitutional means.
I go on, Laurence Tribe:
Even more fundamentally, the EPA, like every administrative
agency, is constitutionally forbidden to exercise powers
Congress never delegated in the first place.
The brute fact is that the Obama administration failed to get climate
legislation through Congress, yet the EPA is acting as though it has
the legislative authority to reengineer the Nation's electric
generating system and power grid. It does not.
Mr. Speaker, we are going to have this case litigated, and nine men
and women in black robes across the street are going to decide this
issue. And we know how they are going to decide this issue.
My fear is not that we are not going to get the right decision. We
are. This isn't our first rodeo here, Mr. Speaker. Remember the recess
appointments from January 2012, where the President stood, and he was
giving a speech in a high school in Ohio. He was giving a speech to
high school students, and he went and he told the tale, Mr. Speaker, of
how there was gridlock in Washington, D.C. He told the tale of how he
wanted to get the people's business done and how Congress was standing
in the way.
Every time he spoke up and talked about how there was gridlock in
Congress, there were boos in the crowd. Every time he spoke up and
said, ``But don't worry, I'm going to go it alone,'' there was applause
throughout the crowd.
Our students who are studying constitutional principles today, our
students who are being trained to be that next generation of leader,
that citizen who sits on the board of directors of the United States of
America, 330 million of us, stood and applauded when the President said
Congress won't do it, so I will do it without them.
He was applauded by Democrats, Mr. Speaker. He was criticized by
Republicans. He went right ahead and did what he said he would do. He
brought out a legal memorandum that still sits on the Justice
Department Web site outlining why it was absolutely permissible to do
what he was doing, even though the Constitution clearly said it was
not.
That case made its way through the Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker. It was
the NLRB v. Noel Canning case, and it was decided 9-0.
If you were a Supreme Court Justice appointed by President Reagan,
you told President Obama that he was violating the law. If you were a
Supreme Court Justice appointed by President Clinton, you told
President Obama he was violating the law. It does not matter whether
you were a Clinton, Reagan, Bush, or even Obama appointee, nominee to
the Supreme Court. Every single one of them agreed that the President
overstepped his bounds.
My question, Mr. Speaker, is: You remember that spring of 2012, but
how many American citizens do, those cheering high school students in
Ohio, that campaign stop at a high school auditorium to say, I'm going
to go it alone. Do they remember when nine Supreme Court Justices said:
No, you won't; no, you won't.
Where does it stop, Mr. Speaker?
Congress says: No, you won't. Congress says: This is our
responsibility. The President says: You are not getting it done my way;
I'm going to go it alone. So it goes to the Supreme Court. The Supreme
Court says, unanimously: No, Mr. President, you are not going to go it
alone.
It is only one short step between the executive branch ignoring the
coequal branch of the government that is the legislature and the
executive branch ignoring the coequal branch of government that is the
Federal courts.
That burden lies on us, Mr. Speaker. It is not a Republican burden or
a Democratic burden. It is an American burden.
I signed up to be on the Oversight Committee, Mr. Speaker. You know
the Oversight Committee here on Capitol Hill. It has jurisdiction over
absolutely everything, and its job is to make sure the executive branch
is doing what the executive branch is supposed to do.
I signed up to be on the Oversight Committee because I thought Mitt
Romney was going to win the last election, and I wanted to be the guy
who said to the next Republican President: No, Mr. President, you can't
do that. We are Article I of the Constitution; you are Article II of
the Constitution. There is a process here, and process matters.
Well, Mitt Romney didn't win that election, so we are doing oversight
over the Obama administration; and every single legitimate issue the
Oversight Committee took up, headlines in the papers about just
political hacks going after their political opposition. It is not true,
and it is too important to dismiss in that way.
James Madison, Mr. Speaker:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one or few or many,
and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
This President has just over a year left in the White House, Mr.
Speaker. I am not here to talk about President Obama. I am here to talk
about our responsibility as 435 Members of the
[[Page H6174]]
House. I am here to talk about America's responsibility as 330 million
individual members of America's board of directors.
Does process matter or do the ends justify the means? Hold
Republicans accountable for not standing up to President Bush. Hold
Democrats accountable for not standing up to President Obama. Hold your
friends and your neighbors and your coworkers accountable if you hear
them say the ends justify the means.
We can only imagine how dangerous these times were. We can only
imagine the summer of 1787 as the entire future of the Republic hung in
the balance. We can only imagine 1776 when we were declaring our
freedom from the world's largest superpower. We can only imagine what
it meant to sign our name on a document pledging our lives, our
fortunes, and our families' lives to the cause.
And as they grappled with those decisions in 1776, in 1787, they knew
one thing with certainty: having all of the power accumulate anywhere,
with anyone, was a threat to individual liberties and freedoms.
The President disagrees with me on a lot of public policy, and I
welcome him to come down here to Congress and advocate for it; and if
you get the votes in this body and you get the votes across the way and
you beat me on public policy, fair and square. That is the way it is
supposed to be. But when any one of us decides that our priorities, our
policy preferences, are so important that the Constitution takes a
backseat, we are not long for this form of government, this greatest
experiment the world has ever known in self-governance.
It is easy to talk about health care, Mr. Speaker. It is easy to talk
about environmental policy. It is easy to talk about water policy. The
list goes on and on and on. What is hard is changing that policy, and
it is deliberately so. It is deliberately so.
As the Courts have taken these challenges on, Mr. Speaker, 9-0,
reining in the President from his overreach. And in that 9-0 case, Noel
Canning, just 2 years ago, the Supreme Court said this:
The recess appointments clause--that was what they were
arguing about at the time--is not designed to overcome
serious institutional friction. It simply provides a
subsidiary method for appointing officials when the Senate is
away during a recess.
Here, as in other contexts, global warming, health care, water
policy, on and on and on, here, as in other contexts, friction between
the branches is an inevitable consequence of our constitutional
structure.
Mr. Speaker, I challenge you to go home to your constituents, as
townhall meeting after townhall meeting after townhall meeting talks
about the gridlock in Washington, D.C. Friction between the branches is
an inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure. We must
celebrate that friction, Mr. Speaker.
We have two ways to change policy in this country: You can either
change your neighbor's mind, or you can replace your delegate to
office. Changing minds and changing people are the only two methods we
have in this country. It is the consequence of our constitutional
structure.
I do not fear gridlock. I am not concerned that we cannot find a
pathway forward. I do fear one man, one group, one party having all of
the control.
{time} 1415
I do fear folks short-circuiting a process that our Founders put in
place to keep us safe for generations to come.
Mr. Speaker, I hope you will join me, as Constitution Day has just
passed, in celebrating the wisdom in that summer of 1787 and committing
ourselves--Republicans and Democrats alike, House Members and Senate
Members alike--to ensuring that policy does not trump process, to
ensure that we get to where all of America wants us to be, but that we
get there the right way, not just because it matters, but because that
is what the Constitution and the law requires.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________